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Microsoft very recently released Windows Vista to the general public with heaps of fanfare, with even Bill Gates appearing on the Daily Show to promote it. It would seem to me that this is probably one of the few releases of Windows of all time with a very lukewarm response from the public and this comic pretty much sums it up nicely. :P Or maybe M$ might’ve to resort to something like this to get people to upgrade.

Jokes aside, ck has a review up at spherebox if you’re interested to read more about it. :)

      

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Here’s my second and final hardware review for this weekend. :)

Now the other piece of computer hardware which I got hold of recently is the Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000. Yes, I actually bought a M$ product. >:| I’ve procrastinated for months in getting a new keyboard even though the 2 year old Logitech standard keyboard keys have gotten really stiff requiring rather strong key beatings which probably weren’t kind to my wrist and fingers.

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Read the rest of the review at spherebox.

      

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Just posted the first out my two hardware reviews of my recent keyboard and mouse purchases on spherebox. Check out my review of the Logitech MX400 laser mouse here. :)

      

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Most tech sites have covered on Google Reader’s recent update to its user interface with mostly positive comments. As I have tried Google Reader previously and loathed it, it was probably the right time to check it out again to see if Google has made it better.

Since it has been a long time since I last used it, I exported my feeds from Bloglines to OPML format and subsequently imported it into Google Reader. No drama here as this process was flawless. There was a delay of a few minutes before all the imported feeds showed up with the recent items in the subscriptions list on the left.

Once everything was in place, the updated Google Reader proved to be pretty impressive. Compared to its predecessor, the interface is now a lot more usable (finally has a decent scrollbar and tree view) and in short, seemed like a AJAX-ified Bloglines. The ’scroll tracking’ feature is rather intuitive as it would mark items as read when you scroll past them which is rather handy if you want to switch to other subscriptions (feeds) or tags (folders) and get back to it later (most other RSS readers would mark all items in a subscription as read the moment you open it). However, this feature doesn’t seem to work properly with subscriptions which only have 1 item which didn’t require any scrolling to read it (manually marking the item as read was required instead).

Besides that minor issue, I don’t have any other negatives to bring up. I would definitely take back the negative comments I made about it. ;) The latest update makes it very compelling to switch and its similarity to Gmail would make it a perfect candidate for those who already use Gmail and want to get started with using an RSS reader.

So while I was getting awed by the updated Google Reader, I noticed subtle user interface changes to the left pane of Bloglines. It was announced by the Bloglines team soon after I noticed it, and in my opinion, were excellent minor tweaks.

AJAX is now used in the left pane which makes it a lot snappier as the whole frame is longer refreshed. Very impressive for such a minor change as it definitely delivers a huge difference in responsiveness. Besides that, they have also reduced the time it automatically refreshes the feeds.

Since my last post on Bloglines, I’m happy to report it has not gone down at all and has been reliably delivering all the updates of my feeds. Kudos to the Bloglines team for the great work they’ve done!

      

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Internet Explorer (IE) has been largely synonymous to browsing the internet ever since Microsoft decided to bundle it with Windows 95 operating system. The much heralded browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape accelerated progressive innovation of new features to the web browser which ended with the demise of Netscape’s Navigator browser. Unfortunately, ever since Microsoft released version 6 of the browser released to the public about five years ago dominating the web browser arena, innovation of new functionality or interface tweaks have grounded to a halt.

The resurgence of a strong competitor to IE in the form of Mozilla Firefox has caused Microsoft to restart its efforts in this arena. After about a year and a half since the announcement that the 7th version of IE was in development, Release Candidate 1 (latest version at time of writing) of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) has been released to the public for testing. A RC1 status would mean a close to complete final version where the goal would be to iron out bugs which appear before the final release is shipped. With lots of promise by Microsoft that this browser will help stem its eroding market share, here are the new features which have been introduced to regain its foothold.

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